A Top ISP
You can waste loads of time trying to connect to a 'free' ISP and simply
not get through. If you want a good, reliable ISP in the UK for dial-up, I recommend ClaraNet.
Their 'Freetime 12' option costs a fiver a month (UK) and includes 12 off-peak
telephone hours per month (on a BT line), with email and 50Mb webspace. If you
need more time online you should get out more (12 hours a month
is 6 full days of your life a year). A good broadband ISP is Pipex. Its users are happy to recommend it. Don't touch Tiscali or Talk-talk, there are far too many complaints about poor service when things go wrong or when trying to terminate an account.
The
Opera Web Browser
I
fully recommend this free web browser from Norway. Opera is easy to install, fast and
well-behaved and runs on just about any system: PC, Mac, Linux, Unix, etc., even
an old one. It has email and newsgroups (if you want) or you can use an existing
method, such as Outlook Express. It is fully W3C compliant, supporting the latest
internet standards. Netscape/Firefox plugins work with Opera and it comes with the
most popular ones (shockwave, flash, etc.) pre-installed.
A useful feature is the simple method of deleting all personal data, such as surfing history, cookies and passwords. This might be handy if other people use your computer. Of particular interst might be the ease of zooming in or out of pictures. Just press the plus or minus key a few times and restore it to normal with the star key.
Opera also has great features for website authors, such as the ease of verifying a page. Very occasionally, some websites won't display properly in Opera as they have been fine-tuned for a particular browser, usually IE. This is not a browser fault, just a company decision to lazily go their own way. You can still make it work though, by changing a setting which pretends that you are using a different browser. You can still download the old Mosaic browser if you like nostalgia.
